Meet the CEOs: Dentsu Indonesia’s Shubhabrata Sarkar

While the marketing industry increasingly focuses on outcomes, Dentsu Indonesia CEO Shubhabrata Sarkar (pictured), is directing his attention on “attempts” at the agency. Having led the agency for two years now, Sarkar believes in building a safe environment, where employees can push boundaries, make personal progress, and subsequently, help the company to achieve collective success. He said:It breeds fairness and courage, something I think is sorely getting extinct in business environments and needs to be brought back in gallons.In an industry-churning phase for agencies, he believes quite calmly, that the key to success merely needs “a big dose of common sense, a dash of application of valuable experience and the collective skill sets of a bunch of mavericks”. With that philosophy, he led Dentsu Indonesia through an ambitious transformation over the past two years with a team of 64.Advertising has always been a passion for Sarkar, who has accumulated a wealth of experience in several recognised creative agencies over the past two decades. He started out as a junior copywriter in Ogilvy Delhi in 1990, and has been creative director at McCann and TBWA\, before moving on to head strategic planning at Wunderman Thompson (previously known as JWT) in 2006 and led the Southeast Asia operations for Bates in 2012. Prior to his current role at Dentsu Indonesia, Sarkar also spent over a year on the client side as head of brand marketing at British American Tobacco. In this latest edition of Meet the CEOs, Sarkar shares with Marketing Interactive his journey in the adland.Marketing Interactive: Who was the mentor who influenced you the most and how?Sarkar: My parents and my wife have mentored me continuously as a person, and I am indebted to them.Professionally, three individuals, from vastly different backgrounds and with very diverse approaches, have had a lot to do with my growth in the industry. They are (in chronological sequence of my work experience with them): former Carat India MD PV Narayanamoorthy; former JWT Indonesia CEO “Lulut” Asmoro, who is now Digitized CEO; and former Ogilvy Group APAC chairman Tim Isaac. What I learned from them is invaluable.Marketing Interactive: What has been the proudest moment in your career?Sarkar: I’d say, the trust reposed in me by Isaac to be CEO of the Southeast Asia cluster at Bates came as a huge moment of pride. I wanted it, but was still pleasantly surprised when I was given the offer. It ranks just a hair’s breadth above Lulut giving me, a complete stranger to him then, the head of planning job at JWT in Indonesia, based on a conversation around a creative portfolio that I then had, having been a creative person for 15 years!Obviously, field opportunities from brave, alternative thinkers spurred me on.It’s impossible to not deliver when someone trusts you to excel so completely. I hope my people see me as such a leader someday.Marketing Interactive: What inspires you the most?Sarkar: Everything, really. From quantum mechanics to ancient philosophy; from the theory of everything to sports performances; from geopolitics to movies. Inspiration is all around us. All we need to do is look. But most of all, the ability of a human being to touch another selflessly is especially inspiring.Marketing Interactive: What’s the toughest part of your job?Sarkar: Changing people’s mindsets! There is no such thing as a “best practice” or a formula, really. Life is not solid-state mathematics.It is the ability to believe that there always is a better way to do everything.That’s what moves us forward. That is the thrill of serendipity. That is the joy of the ride.Marketing Interactive: What do you do in your free time?Sarkar: Free time? What’s that? As kids, my parents never allowed my brother or I to utter the words “I have nothing to do, I’m bored”, so I don’t know what that means. Reading, sports, music, travel, or just ruminating about a million possibilities life holds. There is so much to do, a lifetime isn’t enough.Marketing Interactive: How do you ensure a proper work life balance?Sarkar: By living life as a whole; as one single continuum rather than compartmentalising it. By being fatalistic (comes easy when you are an Indian!) about failures and brave about successes (here’s my license to be even more alternative in thought and action).The mind is a beautiful place. It makes a mockery of the clock and of GPS! Use it to the hilt and the work-pleasure division vanishes, one doesn’t impinge on the other.I measure my day not by hours, but by how many different things I’ve tried that day.I tell my people to leave office if they have nothing to do. To go out, mingle, relax, enjoy. Get away from the tyranny of the clock.Marketing Interactive: Favourite vacation spot?Sarkar: Northeast India, Edinburgh, Dublin, Manado… The easy chair in the backyard of my house!Marketing Interactive: What issues would you like to see the industry change in 2019?Sarkar: Digital obsession: The view that digital is an idea or a solution, whereas it is merely another medium or channel (actually, just a mode of transmission!). Look at what it is doing to brands – all we see are disguised price-offs in that space – what I call “hello kitty” efforts. There’s a perennial “sale” on and the consumer is lapping up the bounty-hunting. This digital obsession is commoditising brands relentlessly.I’m sure that will soon go away as we remind ourselves that understanding the consumer’s relationship with the online space is really the key to building brands. Algorithms will help a lot more then.Data inundation: The belief that more data gets us more in control.Data isn’t king, the consumer is.Analyse chosen data intelligently to identify insights and opportunities. Remember Class Eight statistics lessons? All data, when used injudiciously normalises the inferences and contaminates decisions. Ours is a business of finding the rough edge, not smooth surfaces, isn’t it? Let’s use data to find us the hook to hang our hat on.Marketing Interactive: What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out?Sarkar: Beware the ides of the march…You let your hair down so much, it just falls off!But seriously, I’d say: Live, learn, and pass it on. “Keep your eyes on the road, and your hands upon the wheel” [lyrics from The Doors], because “the game never ends, when your whole world depends, on the turn of a friendly card” [lyrics from The Turn Of A Friendly Card].